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Monday, October 27, 2014

RAIPUR: After the controversial gram sabha resolutions banning non-Hindu religious activity in villages in tribal Bastar, there was fresh tension in Madota village after local Christians were assaulted allegedly by right-wing activists, leaving 12 people injured late on Saturday.

Eleven of the injured are still undergoing treatment at a hospital in Jagdalpur, where they were brought in a truck. While the police recorded their statement, senior civil and police officials are tight-lipped about the clash.

Chhattisgarh Christian Forum (CCF) president Arun Pannalal told TOI that the manner in which the attack was orchestrated raises suspicion that local officials were hand in glove with attackers.

"An announcement was made through drum beats that residents of Kotwar village should assemble at 9am on Saturday to meet the sub-divisional magistrate, deputy superintendent of police and town inspector to discuss ways to douse tension between the two communities. They waited till evening, but nobody turned up. By evening, right-wing activists came in a truck and attacked Christians, accusing them of promoting religious conversion," he said.

Quoting local Christians, Pannalal said, a week ago BJP MP Dinesh Kashyap had visited Bhanpuri village and me gram sabha t local Christians. The MP washed their feet and then made a public announcement that they had completed the process of "ghar wapsi" or home-coming to the Hindu fold. Since then tension has been brewing between Hindus and Christians over prayer meetings at the local church.

Pannalal said that Christian organisations have already moved high court challenging the resolutions adopted by the gram sabhas.

"Now our writ is pending in the high court. We see this latest attack as a pressure tactic," he said.

Tribal Bastar was in focus in May this year after a number of gram sabhas, powerful bodies under the provisions of Panchayati Raj Act, adopted resolutions under section 129 (G) of State Panchayati Raj Act, banning "non-Hindu religious propaganda, prayers and speeches in villages".

12 Christians injured in Bastar assault

The Chhattisgarh Christian Forum (CCF) has alleged that
12 persons belonging to the community were seriously wounded in an
assault by members of the Bajrang Dal in Bastar district’s Madota
village on Saturday. District officials have registered an FIR.

“Christians
had gathered in Madota village under Bhanpuri block of Bastar district
on Saturday morning. The purpose was to discuss the district
administration’s response to the petition filed by Christian bodies in
the Bilaspur High Court over the ban on Christian missionaries in Bastar
villages. The Sub-Divisional Magistrate and Deputy Superintendent of
Police were also expected to be present. But no official turned up.
Instead, around 30 to 40 Bajrang Dal members wearing saffron bands came
armed with sticks and swords and attacked the Christians,” charged Arun
Pannalal, president of the CCF.

Mr. Pannalal said those injured in the attack were admitted to a hospital in Jagdalpur.

However, the Bajrang Dal has denied it was involved in the attack.

“The
allegations levelled against the Bajrang Dal are absolutely baseless.
Some Hindus were invited by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate for a meeting
in the village. Some pastors were also present without any invitation.
The Hindus protested their presence which led to a scuffle,” Bastar
region in-charge of Bajrang Dal, Mahesh Kashyap, told The Hindu.

The CCF has accused the district authorities of being “hand in glove” with the “right-wing elements.”

“No
FIR has been registered in the case and our people have been forced to
go into hiding due to the threat of the Bajrang Dal. The district
authorities along with some right-wing elements are also pressuring us
to withdraw the petition filed in the High Court against the ban on the
entry of non-Hindu missionaries in Bastar,” claimed the CCF president.

Collector refutes charges

However,
Bastar district collector Ankit Anand refuted the CCF’s allegations.
“There was a clash between two groups in the village on Saturday and we
have registered an FIR against the accused persons. The situation is
under control. Medical assistance was provided to the injured people,”
Mr. Anand said.

There have been reconversion reports from Uttar Pradesh on Hindi media but not on English. Below is a news story that came this week from Jaunpur where allegedly 310 Christians were converted into Hinduism.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

The
proposed caste census has already made the dominant vote-banks of
Lingayats and Vokkaligas restless, apprehensive as they are that it will
lead to their fragmentation and thereby weakening them as a political
force. Now, the census by the Karnataka Backward Classes Commission
(KBCC), aggressively backed by chief minister Siddaramaiah, is set to
rub the minorities too in the wrong way.

First, they will be
asked whether they have ever been converted from one religion to the
another at any point in time. Every citizen - whether Muslim, Christian,
Parsi, Sikh, Buddhist or any other minority community - will also be
asked what the 'traditional occupation' of their ancestors was before
the conversion. There will be multiple questions on these two issues to
ensure the answer is elicited, one way or the other. The census
questions on conversion could turn into a weapon for the right-wingers
of all religions, as proselytising and traditional occupations - like
that of the barbers - are highly sensitive issues. So does a 'secular'
government need these answers? The official stand is that the commission
and the state government have taken a calculated risk to get actual
numbers of each sub-caste and profession, so that sufficient funds in
budgets and allocations can be given to each community. It does have a
fatal flaw: Individuals can claim to have belonged to any caste
retrospectively, but there will be no way of verifying it. This survey will also not certify that an individual belongs to a certain caste or community.
The Lingayats and Vokkaligas fear that the real intent is to undermine
their hegemony and instead catapult the Kurubas, which is the community
Siddaramaiah belongs to, as the No.1 caste. This is because the census
will ask the question: Is your caste known by any other name?"This is
likely to fragment both the major communities, leaving the more people
under the Kuruba name tag. The Kurubas, as also many other OBCs,
are evidently gung-ho, as they feel a re-enumeration would show their
"actual" strength and garner more benefits for them. This is true of
other backward castes also. For example, former CM, the late S
Bangarappa, was of the opinion that if the hunter community, known under
different names like Beda, Jeda or Valmiki, could be put together, they
would form the single largest community in the state. There is a
column asking the sub-caste. So non-homogenous castes where different
sub-castes occupy different traditional professions will show up, like
the Kaadu Kurubas and Jenu Kurubas, who are forest gatherers rather than
shepherds, the traditional profession of Kurubas. Sources say that a
total of 1,077 castes will come under the census. KBCC chairman H
Kantharaj told Bangalore Mirror: "Muslims as a religious group are
categorised in 2B. But some of them are also classified under 2A based
on their traditional occupation. For example, Pinjaras and Chapparbands
are caste groups based on professions. We are trying to get these
numbers right." Siddaramaiah had set aside a sum of Rs 21 crore as
deputy CM in 2004-05 budget for the census, but it never took off. Now,
his government has released Rs 117 crore for the purpose and nearly 1.25
lakh enumerators will do the survey across the state in November and
December, a far cry from the simple day-long survey conducted by
Telangana recently to identify inhabitants of their state. Kantharaj
said this would be the most exhaustive census ever. "It will also have
columns for inter-caste marriages, for people who say they have no caste
and also for those who identify themselves as the third gender," he
said. Further, he added: "A single caste is known by several different
names (like the hunter community cited above). So the question after
asking the caste name is, whether it is known by another name." The
chairman said the CM has made it clear that the census should follow the
Supreme Court guidelines. "This census will cover the social and
educational data that shows the economic condition. Plus it will collect
information of political backwardness of the people as well. Land
ownership and even ownership of animals will be counted. Even data on
why there are school dropouts and why there is a difference between
rural and urban education will be collected." He contended that this
census was not just a job, but a noble mission. "The CM has said that
it should be very meticulous. Every department of the government will
benefit from this census." Digitised data from this census should be
available by April 2015, mid-way through the term of the present
Congress government. Data collected would include occupation, income,
expenditure, immovable assets, availability of drinking water facilities
and so on. S Japhet, director, Centre for the Study of Social
Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, National Law School of India University,
who was part of the expert committee which framed the questions, said,
"The common perception is that castes and religions are homogenous. But
it is not the case. Take the Jains for example. We tend to think all of
them are rich people from Rajasthan or Gujarat. But in reality, the
economic status of a Jain from Tumkur or Belgaum is no different from
his neighbours from other castes." Japhet added that the enumerators
need to be sensitive in asking questions.

POLITICAL CASTES UPSET
The inclusion of the sub-caste has already upset many political castes
who see it as an attempt to divide their unity. When the per cent of
each sub-caste is revealed, it may lead to more fragmented caste
politics, they feel. But Japhet said: "You cannot wish away these things
in India. Even if you want to annihilate caste, you first need to
recognise them as realities and deal with them with sincerity." Japhet
said that the caste census will be a "major breakthrough in
understanding the social structure," of Karnataka's society. Earlier,
the state government had appointed commissions which did sample surveys
and came up with percentage estimates for castes. However each of them
from the Venkataswamy Commission, Havanur Commission and the Chinnappa
Reddy commission were challenged by various caste groups. "These sample
surveys have been challenged so many times and no one is ready to agree
that any of them is proper," said Japhet.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

The Congress government in Karnataka has rejected a final report of
the Justice B K Somashekhara inquiry commission into a series of attacks
on churches and Christian institutions in coastal Karnataka in
September 2008 shortly after the BJP came to power in the state.The decision to reject the final report of the Justice B K
Somashekhara commission was taken by the Siddaramaiah government at a
Cabinet meeting on Thursday evening. Law minister T B Jayachandra
stated after the meeting that the inquiry commission’s report was
rejected on account of a disparity between an interim report of the
commission and the final report.
In its final report, the Justice B K Somashekhara commission had
exonerated right wing groups like the Bajrang Dal of involvement in the
attacks. In its interim report the commission had stated that there was
evidence to indicate involvement of the right wing groups in the
attacks.
The law minister stated that the state government had decided to
accept a report on the church attacks made by the National Human Rights
Commission following an inquiry where it found right wing groups to be
involved. The government would order prosecution of those involved in
the attacks on the basis of the NHRC report the cabinet had decided,
Jayachandra said.The church attacks in coastal Karnataka occurred shortly after the
BJP came to power in Karnataka in May 2008. The BJP government lead by B
S Yeddyurappa had set up the Justice B K Somashekhara commission to
investigate the attacks.In an interim report placed before the government in September 2009
the commission found involvement of right wing groups like the Bajrang
Dal in the attacks since Bajrang Dal leaders had held a press conference
to claim responsibility for vandalizing churches in the Mangalore
region.In its 2011 final report the Justice Somashekhar commission changed
its stance and stated that an impression of Sangh Parivar involvement in
the church attacks was falsely created to tarnish the image of the BJP
government.While accepting the NHRC report on the church attacks the state
cabinet has also accepted nine recommendations in the NHRC report
including payment of compensation to those injured in the attacks and
protection for places of worship of minority communities.

The recent outpouring of support for the “development” agenda of the
Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, by several leaders of the Catholic
and Protestant churches may possibly stave off the immediate attention
of the dreaded Intelligence Bureau and the Ministry of Home affairs, but
it is not likely to reduce the deep and seemingly abiding distrust the
Indian political and social system has of what is popularly called the
“Missionaries”. Nor will it mitigate the hate that is now erupting in
India against religious minorities.

Missionaries was a term once used in the Indian subcontinent to
describe clergy, religious and social workers who came in various
periods over three centuries from Italy, Spain, France, the United
Kingdom and later from the United States. They set up schools and
hospitals, and mission stations, in the hills, plains and deep forests
of much of the Indian land mass.

The coming of foreign, and almost entirely White, religious personnel
stopped soon after World War II, but there was still a sizable number in
the country at Independence. In 1993 there were just 1,923, and by
2001, it had come to just a little more than half of that, at 1100
registered foreign missionaries in India. We have no official data for
2013-14, but estimates vary from 200 to 500, some of them Indian
nationals. Most of them have lived in India for periods ranging from 20
years to 60 years.

This is far removed from the image that the Sangh Parivar, and the
government, paints of a land teeming with western missionaries. But
since the 1960s, it is impossible for any priest or Nun to get a
“Religious Visa” to India, and many who come here on tourist visas have
to sign papers at Indian consulates that they will not indulge in any
religious activity in India. Only rarely is a visa given to Tele
Evangelists for “Crusades” or mass prayers.

But it will not be entirely correct to suggest that it is just the
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and its political face the Bharatiya Janata
Party that oppose mission work on grounds of ideology and relgion. The
larger Indian political leadership, both in the Congress and in other
parties including those emerging from the socialist movement of Mr. Ram
Manohar Lohia of North India have seen the community as an appendage of
the British Raj. The leader of the Freedom struggle, Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi, already called a Mahatma and later formally named the Father of
the Nation, had serious doubts about missionaries. E. Stanley Jones,
Stanley Jones in is book The Christ of the Indian Road, records an
encounter with Gandhi who he asked “though you quote the words of Christ
often, why is it that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his
follower?” Gandhi’s reply was clear: “Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I
love your Christ. It is just that so many of you Christians are so
unlike your Christ”.Gandhi’s statement moulded the political discourse
in Independent India.

The Constitution of India promulgated in 1950 nonetheless gave
Christians the right not just to profess and practice their faith, but
also to propagate it, with some law givers stressing that propagation of
faith was integral to the religion. But among the first acts of the
government was to withdraw affirmative action from untouchable groups
other than those professing the Hindu faith. The issue has agitated the
community ever since.

The absolute ban on freedom of faith of this 16 to 20 per cent of the
population was ostensibly to prevent their walking into Christianity, or
rarely, into Islam.

The bane of the Christian community has been the anti-conversion laws,
ironically called Freedom of Religion Acts which brought the State
firmly into a process that was otherwise between a person and his
conscience. Six states have these laws on board, another has enacted but
not yet implemented it. The BJP has said in its election campaign it
intends to make this a national law. Governmental permissions and severe
penalties are the cutting edge of these laws. Political parties,
barring perhaps the Marxists, and even the Supreme Court of India tend
to agree to the need to the anti conversion laws. The United Nations
Human Rights Council, European Union and international freedom of faith
organisations have called them a grave violation of the UN Charter on
fundamental human rights.

The premise that no one converts unless he is being lured, cheated or
coerced into Christianity – or Islam – is now a major political slogan
in the Bharatiya Janata party’s mission to control every regional
government after coming to power in New Delhi in May 2014. And it is
targetted as much against Muslims and it is against the Christian
community.

The Muslim community has been the object of suspicion after the
Partition of India in 1947, which saw unprecedented violence, that has
left an unspoken but virulent Islamophobia in Indian society. The recent
acts of terror in India have deepened this chasm between the
communities.

This officially sanctioned suspicion, and from it the political hate,
underpins the current campaigns by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and
its subsidiaries which target both the Christian and the Muslim
communities, specially in north and Central India.

A new dimension has been added this year in the electoral rhetoric of
the BJP in its very successful run up to the General elections earlier
this year, and elections to the legislative assemblies of several states
in north and west India. This is a campaign to evoke fears in the
highly patriarchal feudal societies in rural India that the security and
sexual purity of their women is being threatened by young Muslim and
Christian men.

It began innocently enough in Kerala with the state High court asking
the police of there was a design in several cases of inter-community
marriages, in which the men were almost always Muslim. The police could
not find any design and the matter seemed to have ended, till now when
it erupted in far away north India. But now, the police are on the side
of local political thugs, and both seem acting under the patronage and
protection of powerful leaders in New Delhi.

Love Jihad, as it is called, has been presented as a grand design in
which Hindu young women are seduced by Muslim in Christian men, lured
into marriage, and the converted in a conspiracy to alter the
demographic profile of “Hindu” India.

The result has been the hounding of young men, and the humiliation of
young Hindu women in areas as distant from each as Meerut in Uttar
Pradesh and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. In Madhya Pradesh, the district
police chief “annulled” the marriage of a Christian man and a Hindu
woman under pressure of a Hindutva mob.

The governments of the states, and more than that, the federal
government in New Delhi headed by the Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi,
have maintained an intriguing silence, with no official condemnation of
this criminal intimidation of young couples in love. This has led civil
society groups to believe that the hate campaign has the blessings of
the ruling dispensation in the country. The inaction of the superior
courts and the national Human Rights commissions in failing to take
cognisance of these extra-judicial intrusions into the personal life of
citizens compounds the crisis.

Friday, October 10, 2014

After refusing permission for an annual Christian gathering in
Jobat, Alirajpur, the Madhya Police have served a notice on the
organiser asking whether his organisation was involved in terror,
criminal or anti-social activities among other things.

Jhabua-based Moksha Foundation had organised a gathering in Jobat
from October 6-9, but the Alirajpur administration refused permission
because a marriage between a Christian man and a Hindu woman had caused
communal tension.

On Tuesday, foundation president Kapil Sharma was asked by the police
to fill up personal information like name, address, passport number and
political association among 20 points listed in a one-page document.

The second document sought information about the organisation: like
the source of funding; whether involved in terror or criminal
activities; details of members, including foreigners; and a clear note
on the actual inclination of the organization (religious, political,
social or communal).

A similar exercise had caused a furore in 2011 when the police in
some districts sought to collect details of Christian organisations in a
similar format. In the wake of protests by the minority community which
dubbed the exercise as community profiling, the state police
headquarters had claimed that the circular was issued by a mistake.

Jhabua SP Krishnaveni Desavatu told The Indian Express that it was a
routine exercise. “Maybe the local police did not have information about
the organization. They normally collect such information from active
and inactive organisation. There is nothing to worry,” she said.

Sharma said never in the past had he been asked to provide
information about himself and the organisation. He said he would reply
in a couple of days but took offence to the type of questions.

Spokesperson of Catholic Bishops Conference, Madhya Pradesh, Fr Johny
P J said the Catholic community would challenge the exercise if it was
ordered by the administration. “Normally the police resort to such steps
under pressure from right-wing organisations,” he said.

Monday, October 06, 2014

After declaring a marriage between a Christian man and a Hindu girl
invalid, the local administration in Jobat, Alirajpur, has refused
permission to the minority community to hold an annual gathering on the
ground that it was likely to “disturb peace”.

The four-day gathering organized by All India United Christian Front
(AIUF) and Moksha Foundation (MF) was supposed to start from Monday at
an agricultural field which is two kilometers away from Jobat town.

The town earlier saw protests by right-wing organizations after a Christian man married a Hindu girl.

The police administration had declared as invalid the marriage
between Joseph Pawar and Ayushi Wani, both major, who tied the knot at
an Arya Samaj temple in Bhopal.

The 5th Massihi Atmik Jagruti Sabha had been planned in advance but
the administration first cancelled the permission on September 30 after
Hindu organizations threatened to begin an indefinite protest from
October 1 till the couple was not traced and the woman restored to her
parents.

While denying the permission, SDM (Jobat) Sharda Chouhan in a letter
to Kapil Sharma, who is founder of MF and state head of AIUF said if the
meet was held “Wani Samaj and Hindu Sangathan(s) could commit some
cognizable offence.” The SDM quoted an input by the in-charge of the
Jobat Police Station behind the refusal.

The couple was traced and brought to Jobat on October 1, the day
Hindu organizations enforced a complete bandh but withdrew the call for
indefinite protest. Ayushi told the administration that she loved Joseph
and refused to go back to her parents. While she was sent to Nari
Niketan in Ujjain, Joseph was escorted to Indore.

Thinking that the matter had been resolved, Sharma again wrote to the
SDM seeking fresh permission for the meet. He said invites had been
sent to followers weeks in advance and it would be difficult to stop
them from coming to Jobat.

Sharma told The Indian Express that on Sunday he got a call
from the SDM to convey the administration’s decision that the permission
for the meet remained cancelled because the atmosphere was still
charged.

Chouhan informed that the ‘mahaul’ was not conducive for the
gathering of Christians and that the permission had been denied because
it could have become a law and order issue. “What if something goes
wrong? Then we will be blamed for having allowed the meet to take place”
she said adding tempers were still running high. She said the venue
(agriculture field) suggested the meet was planned at a larger scale.

Sharma said that he would challenge the denial of permission in a
court of law because the minority community’s constitutional right was
being violated.

Fr Anand Muttungal of Isai Mahasangh slammed the Alirajpur
administration saying security concern was an excuse. “How could
permission be refused for a peaceful meet that could have taken place
inside a church,” he asked dubbing the cancellation as “deliberate”.

Refusing the allegation by right-wing organizations that people are
converted during the annual meet, Sharma’s letter to the SDM said “no
one has been converted in the last four meets and no one will be
converted in future.”

Friday, October 03, 2014

The campaign against alleged `love jihad’ conspiracy has taken
its toll on a marriage involving a Christian boy and a Hindu girl in
Jobat town of tribal-dominated Alirajpur district in Madhya Pradesh.Joseph Pawar and Ayushi Wani who eloped and married in an Arya Samaj
temple in Bhopal four days ago were traced by the police to Pawagarh in
Gujarat after Hindu Jagaran Manch (HJM) and other right-wing
organizations threatened to launch a massive agitation.
The town observed a complete bandh on Wednesday the day the
superintendent of police met the two families separately in his office
as hundreds of right-wing activists assembled in the premises.

Ayushi, 19, told Alirajpur SP Akhilesh Jha that she loved Josesh, a
nursing college student and that she went with him on her own. She
refused to return to her parents and was later sent to Nari Niketan in
Ujjain.The activists wanted Joseph booked for luring Ayushi into marriage
but the police said no case could be made against him because she was a
major and gave a statement that she loved him. Joseph was escorted to
Indore under police protection after the police told him that he would
not be safe given that tempers were running high.The police declared the marriage invalid saying Joseph is not a Hindu
and that he will have to convert to Hinduism by following the procedure
laid in the Freedom of Religion Act, which says the potential convert
and those presiding over the ceremony should notify the district
magistrate a month in advance.Jha told The Indian Express that he did what appeared best in the
circumstances given that 300-400 activists had gheraoed his office and
the threat of arson and damage to government property was looming large.
“There are some plus and minus points when an administrator takes a
decision in such matters.’’Joseph tried to argue that the marriage in Arya Samaj temple was done following Hindu rituals.Ayushi’s family had filed a complaint on September 26 when she did
not return home from college. Hindu activists threatened to take to the
streets when it was revealed that she had eloped with a Christian boy
and gave the police time till September 30 to trace and bring the couple
back to Jobat.The police claimed they used their network to find that after the
marriage on September 28 the couple went to Pavagarh from where the two
were brought to Jobat on October 1.The SP said situation had returned to normal on Thursday but that it
was not safe for Joseph to return. “It’s possible that he could apply
for converting his faith,’’ he said.